I found James O Brien so infuriating today! He accused his callers of putting their fingers in their ears and shoutng "Yadda Yadda Yadda" on not agreeing with him about his views on Corbyn but it is him doing that!
All the questions he has put have been answered by either callers or by people on twitter but he makes out that they haven't or stays quiet about them!
The answers to his questions are obvious too! On Corbyn allowing a free vote and not "showing leadership" by enforcing a whipped vote on Syria, that is obviously because there are many Lab MP's trying to oust Corbyn out of his job and that was their plan from the second he got elected as Labour leader.
If Corbyn enforced a mandatory whipped vote, then loads of the shadow cabinet would have resigned and then Corbyn would be expected by the right wing media to quit too. Corbyn realises this which is why he's not going to give them the chance!
What Corbyn is doing is trying to last long enough to get the results of what the public really think of Labour under him and that means waiting for elections and polls over time and try and work out the average polling figures. Its obvious that Blairites don't want Corbyn to last long enough for him to get a good average in the polls and in election results, they want to force him out very early and then try and make out the left of centre leaders are unelectable when the fact is Labour won on a centre left basis many times before Tony Blair ever became an MP!
The other obvious thing O Brien is overlooking is that Cameron's plan on Syria is the same plan as he had on Libya and the same thing is going to happen because even if the Assad regime fell, there is no way the rebels will remain united and allow a peaceful transition to democracy/elections. They will all fight for power/control of the country and in the meantime they will probably go after the people who supported the Assad regime. No matter how much people and politicans do not want it, this will need international ground troops to go in and sort out and keep the peace, nation build, over decades otherwise the situation will never get peaceful.